To be an effective leader oftentimes means empowering employees to make changes and decisions to help customers even if those decisions don’t align with yours.
The 80/20 of business success stems directly from leadership. The best leaders can make even the worst-performing teams excel and, unfortunately, the weakest leaders can drag down even the best of teams. A few questions to ponder include:
- Does your culture encourage empowerment? Regardless of what you say, do people believe they will be rewarded for empowering employees?
- Do your managers jump to answer questions or give their employees a chance to shine?
- Do you communicate empowerment but would get upset if your employee made an empowered decision that created a month-end shipping crisis?
- Do your employees understand the guidelines within which they can make an empowered decision?
- Are you willing to live with and vocally support an empowered decision that doesn’t align with how you would have handled the situation?